Nutella cookies, two ways

I meant to post about these cookies sooner, but somehow I didn’t get around to it until now. I decided to round up the recipes I had for Nutella cookies to compare them, so here they are. I started with a peanut butter Nutella cookie recipe from Little B Cooks. I made them smaller and skipped the 15-minute resting time in the fridge. After 8 minutes in the oven, they came out ugly, dry, crumbly cookies; they were good, but not great. I stored the leftover dough in the fridge, and the next day, forget it – it had completely dried out and felt like sand. Actually, they reminded me of the Mexican peanut candy: good, albeit crumbly. I wasn’t ready to give up on them, though. I had another recipe that was basically the exact same dough, but with a lower ratio of peanut butter and Nutella to flour, so I thought if anything, those would be even drier! I ended up making my own by using the dough from the 36-hour cookie, and those are keepers! Here is my recipe below, and it makes two dozen cookies (possibly fewer if, like me, you actually prefer this dough raw). Note that you could also makes these with something like Barney Butter or a different nut butter, and a vegan chocolate spread. The peanut butter flavor is more muted than I thought, perhaps because the color of the cookie made me expect it more (whereas I didn’t really expect it by looking at something like comfort cookies, so the flavor stood out more there ).

1 cup cake flour
1 cup bread flour
½ tsp. baking soda
¾ tsp. baking powder
¾ tsp. coarse salt (less if your peanut butter is salted)
1 ¼ sticks (10 Tbsp.) unsalted margarine (or butter)
¾ cup light brown sugar
½ cup granulated sugar
1 large egg
1 tsp. natural vanilla extract
¾ cup peanut butter (I used Skippy Natural Creamy Peanut Butter)
1/3 cup Nutella

Preheat oven to 350 °F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a nonstick baking mat. Set aside.

Sift flours, baking soda, baking powder and salt into a bowl. Set aside.

Using a mixer fitted with paddle attachment, cream margarine and sugars together until very light, about 3-5 minutes (but do not overmix). Add egg, vanilla and peanut butter, stirring well. Reduce speed to low, add dry ingredients and mix until just combined, 5 to 10 seconds. Add the Nutella and mix it in only a few second with the stand mixer, or use a spoon – you want streaks of chocolate, not homogenous dough. Shape into cookies (I made 2 sheets of 12 cookies each; store unused dough in the fridge, covered with plastic wrap, and let it come to room temperature a bit before shaping). Bake for 10 minutes.



The other recipe I had was from Tasty Kitchen. I modified it by omitting the sugar altogether. I have a major sweet tooth, so if I can’t justify adding sugar to Nutella, trust me that it would be way too sweet! Even now, they were practically too sweet for my taste. These were the Engineer’s favorites, though, so we’re definitely keeping the recipe. They were so quick to make, too, that the dough was ready before the oven was done preheating. This recipe also makes about two dozen.

1 cup Nutella
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 egg

Preheat oven to 350 °F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a nonstick baking mat. Set aside.

Mix all the ingredients together well. Form into 1-inch balls. Place on the cookie sheet and flatten with the bottom of a glass (I shaped them with my hands). Bake 7-8 minutes or until set.



If you are looking for another recipe to finish that jar of Nutella, how about some Nutella bread puddings?